Latest Posts

Last Sunday the new Turnbull Liberal Government made Jamie Briggs Minister for Cities. This marks the Liberal Party’s first positive intervention into the Australian city in almost five decades. In excellent articles Liam Hogan and Alan Davies as well as Malcolm Farr and Michael Bleby have many aspects of this appointment covered. After spending the last few months in the urban archives, it feels similar to when Tom Uren became ‘Minister for Cities’ under Gough Whitlam. The mood amongst urbanists and the wider community is hopeful yet cautious. Particularly because the Federal Liberal Party are often perceived as urban agnostics. So Turnbull’s appointment of Briggs seemingly takes on an added level of importance: the Liberal Party, Welcome to the City. Yet

Without warning last Friday at midnight the Victorian Government did away with the ‘25,000 square metre rule’ as it has been for the past 20 years. Especially undemocratic, this rule empowered the planning minister to approve any building with over 25,000 square metres of floor space without recourse to the local council or the community. It has had dramatic irreversible long-term impacts for Melbourne. This blog reflects on its history.

Calls for an Australian Minister for Cities are becoming louder. Groups such as the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council, the Australian Institute of Architects, Planning Institute of Australia, Property Council, Engineers Australia, Green Building Council of Australia, Council of Capital City Lord Mayors and a cross-party parliamentary friendship group for better cities have endorsed the proposal. Various commentators agree, some of whom are members of those groups. A consensus appears to be emerging that the Australian city requires federal intervention.

The Australian City in History has yet to be written. If it were, there is one person that would loom large: Hugh Stretton. He died on 15 July 2015 after a long battle with illness, three days past his ninety-first birthday. There was a short obituary in the Adelaide Advertiser and his personal friend economist Geoff Harcourt wrote a touching tribute: ‘I doubt that we shall see his like again.’

No Australian Federal Government did more for urban heritage than Gough Whitlam’s. Yet his childhood home, called Ngara, faces demolition any day now, at the tail end of an urban heritage conflict. A few weeks ago the Heritage Council of Victoria decided that Ngara was not of state heritage significance. Located in the inner eastern suburb of Kew, the house was built by Whitlam’s grandfather. Whitlam was born there and lived there for 18 months. For the heritage council, this was an insufficient basis to require preservation. The saga over Ngara is not entirely over. The local Boroondara Council might

The Rialto precinct in Melbourne is undergoing another facelift in the coming months. The Age reported last week that at the corner of Collins and King streets a new wraparound 5-story glass and steel office block would soon be built, adjoining the Rialto Towers. As this part of the Melbourne CBD has been a research interest of mine for a while, I’ve been following this development with interest. The commentary was accepting of the proposal. Fronting more of the Rialto Towers onto King Street is part of the renewal of the area.

Urban history is one of the oldest forms of history practiced in Australia. Early local historians like A.W. Greig were interested in cities and its spaces. Similarly, since World War II, the Australian city has been subject to much local and academic historical analysis, and remains a perennially popular topic. After all, as Graeme Davison argues, Australia was effectively ‘born urban’. Since colonisation, much Australian history has played out in its cities even when this is not made explicit. After all, history must happen somewhere. Most often in Australia – where urbanisation rates hover around 80-90% – this is in cities.

Despite my intentions, this blog has not progressed much since January. Unsurprisingly, I became caught up in my literature review, seminars, and other activities required during the first six months of my PhD. Fortunately over the past few weeks, I’ve begun original research on Australian urban heritage, and written a draft of my first PhD chapter. I’ve been tweeting regularly. It is now time to return to this blog.

It’s 1 January 2015, which marks the commencement date of my phd. Still feeling groggy, rather than hitting the books, I instead have set up this blog. Over the next three or so years I’ll be researching the history of urban heritage with a focus on Australia. I’m particularly interested in how notions of what ‘heritage’ is has shifted over the last five decades since it emerged as a concern in the 1960s. In the 1970s, heritage was a few nineteenth-century buildings in the Rocks, Sydney. Today, it’s Melbourne’s Palace Theatre, posited as significant as a form of ‘cultural heritage’. More on my research topic in future posts; as I firm